It seems like consumer Windows PC's have been a low-margin commodity for years now, and Microsoft is trying to keep Dell's face in the mud. I think they'd be better off with a different investor who doesn't have such an agenda.

This is business. All businesses have an agenda hidden or not. There isn't a company in existence that moves to help another out of good will. MS breathed life back into Apple when it was clear Apple was going to fall if no one did anything. MS helped Apple to help itself. MS is doing the same thing here. MS makes most of its money from enterprise NOT the home user. DELL wants to move away from consumer products (home user) and focus on the enterprise users. I see nothing wrong here. They both share a common interest and since MS has the dominant enterprise OS and and office suite this partnership is a no brainer.Please explain to us how MS is trying to 'keep Dell's face in the mud.' MS is not a direct competitor of Dell's in any way. The relationship between MS and Dell is a symbiotic one. MS can only benefit from helping Dell succeeding with what it plans on doing.

I agree with your first three sentences. But Microsoft was forced to help Apple back then.

A problem with Microsoft investing a substantial amount in Dell, unless it's a short term loan, is that it will make Dell a preferred vendor. Microsoft has stated numerous times in the last that it doesn't favor one vendor over the other. We can argue whether that's true or not, but this would be a blatant, and very public renouncement of that stated policy. How would other vendors react? That needs to be taken into account. And while Microsoft may have them over a barrel, as all attempts to make Linux popular on the desktop have failed, there may come some way if enough want it badly.

If MS did buy a stake in Dell and was able to exert control over decisions, given the size of Dell would this be considered an anti-competitive?Effectively could MS just get Dell to remove Linux and Google OS's from its products and pre-install them with MS services such as Skymail, Bing searchbar, Nokia Maps, etc without repurcussions because its not MS doing it and they don't have a majority stake?

It screams out to me as a move by Microsoft to do two primary things: 1) eliminate the primary (and almost only) retailer of off-the-shelf computer pre-installed with Linux

This is silly. Microsoft is focused on competing with Apple and Google and they are generally losing. Desktop Linux is a completely fringe technology. It's a superior OS than Windows if you do command line type work, just like LaTeX is completely superior to Microsoft Word, but it has a learning curve and it's fringe.

Indeed. There is a shift going on from Windows laptop/desktops to iPad/Android tablets. Linux doesn't come into the equation (aside from Android).

I'm sure the shift will stabilize at some point, but for sure the desktop paradigm will be used less and less.

It's interesting that OS X, iOS and Android are all some flavor of Unix. With Windows being the odd man out.

I agree with your first three sentences. But Microsoft was forced to help Apple back then.

How was MS forced to? Steve offered to end the long running court battle teh 2 companies were involved in in exchange for money and new Mac specific versions of Office and IE for 5 years (I think). It isnt' like helping Apple was a court order.

I think MS is trying to do away with the "PC" with it's Win 8 platform. By dumbing down the interface to a tablet, folks will be more inclined to move over to a tablet ... then buy a keyboard for it. Really, it's just a notebook computer sold as two separate parts.

I think this change is overstated. Computers are shrinking, as they always have. The new form factor will be smaller and thinner than the old form factor. Removable keyboard, sure, why not?

It's still a computer. The PC is not being abolished, it's just being changed, again. "In the future, computers may weigh no more than 1.5 tons!" There is still going to be a need for manufacturers to produce the hardware, whatever size and shape it happens to be.

Yeah ... it's actually sort of dumb all the names we see these days ... "tablet, ultrabook, netbook, notebook, laptop, desktop, smartphone". They're all just computers; some specialized for a purpose, others more multi-purpose.

What I do know is the "desktop" I built last year would have made an IT server admin blush and be jealous 10 years ago, and that's just a "hot rod" box from Ars system build guide. Desktops really are turning into overkill, even for (puts on flame-retardant suit) pc gaming. I usually have boinc science projects crunching on all cpu cores WHILE I'm playing some pc game. The gpu is the gaming bottleneck mostly.

10 years ago, virtualization and thin clients were a bit of a joke. But, now, they're pretty robust and very do'able. Handing folks a "computer" the size of a small book strapped to the back of their monitor ... or giving them a tablet which acts as computer and monitor, then plugging a keyboard into it. If office programs get better, that could be the new norm,

Unfortunately, I see MS killing it by doing stupid subscription-model stuff. Folks will pay $100 for MS Office every now and then. And, they may be willing to do $5/mo for it. But, I think MS wants to price-gouge like $30/mo for it. And, once they stop having "releases" and just have subscriptions, I think they'll start resting on their laurels and just bug fix w/o really innovating.

Hmmm... just a thought ... Commodore 64 was a keyboard/computer that required an external monitor/tv. Now we have tablets which are monitor/computers that require an external keyboard. (well, they don't REQUIRE one, but, you know...) Funny how times change.

We've seen where things are going. After Apple's coup in making a wildly successful business model from staunchly clinging to the closed system model for their entire existence, everyone wants to duplicate that. It's all about owning the whole stack, tightly controlling every single aspect, and squeezing consumers and developers alike by the balls for every shekel they can get. And consumers can't get enough.

The new frontier is the pay-to-play model, and as a developer, your costs increase with every new popular platform, because of the costs involved in hardware and tools, not to mention the shakedown of your profits.

Companies like Dell are doomed unless they become a part of someone else's machine, or somehow develop their own device du jour and get enough market share from it.

Honestly this is exactly my first thought on reading it. It screams out to me as a move by Microsoft to do two primary things: 1) eliminate the primary (and almost only) retailer of off-the-shelf computer pre-installed with Linux (in this case Ubuntu), and 2) acquire the hardware division it needs to move their lock-down plans forward.

Regarding point 2, they already started by locking down WindowsRT to force you to use their store, just like an iProduct forces you to use iTunes and the Apple App Store. Stage two that many of us have been pointing to as the logical (and horrifying) progression is to extend that control to the desktop (carefully, so as not to flirt with the AT&T-style breakup they were supposed to get before but bought their way out of), similarly to how Apple did with making Lion more iTunes-centric, with UEFI icing on the cake to lock down even other computers.

So yes, potentially two birds with one stone: kill off the only major retailer of consumer, off-the-shelf linux computers and set the stage for an Apple-like lockdown of the PC, complete with their hands on the hardware side (all it takes is saying "sorry, we're not licensing Windows to non-Dell computers any more" and businesses get to decide between migration costs to linux or using Dell exclusively, like you use Apple exclusively if you want a Mac).

Admittedly this is very much the worst-case extreme scenario, but given Microsoft's history and modus operandi you know it's occurred to them, and the thought alone is giving them hard-ons like a triple-dose of viagra.

What you don't seem to understand is that consumer's DON'T WANT LINUX. That's why Dell is the only company offering linux desktops, and I wonder what the ratio of windows vs linux boxes they sold, everything else being the same ofc.

I agree with your first three sentences. But Microsoft was forced to help Apple back then.

How was MS forced to? Steve offered to end the long running court battle teh 2 companies were involved in in exchange for money and new Mac specific versions of Office and IE for 5 years (I think). It isnt' like helping Apple was a court order.

The 'help' came as a settlement shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple. It was pretty much a sure fire win for Apple, as actual Quicktime code was used in Microsoft's media player. But, he wanted to put the suit to bed and focus on products. And he got what was most important to Apple. The 5 years of guaranteed Office development was more valuable than any amount of money. At the time, Apple still had no long term debt, and around 7 billion cash in the bank. So while money is nice and all, the 5 year commitment was worth far more than any cash. The symbolic 150 million in non voting shares Microsoft bought was just a touch of icing.

This is also when the cross licensing with no copying of products was signed.

Every aspect of the agreement benefited both Microsoft and Apple, as the Mac software division at Microsoft has always made money.

Consumer products are Dell's core business, this is just as stupid as when HP announced (and later recanted) that they would be focusing on business solutions. Dell has some very attractive products at the moment, if they could just make that final step and get their QC in gear and optimize internal processes they could be doing much better. The problem is not what they're selling, which is obvious based on the volumes that are selling, it's the way the company is managed.

Agreed. Getting out of the PC business and keeping the server business is dumb, there are synergies there you would lose. And why get out of the PC business in the first place? It's not because it's not profitable, it's because it's not profitable enough. Not profitable enough for what? For the stock market. It brings down margins for investors who don't actually care about the long-term well-being of the company. It's still a perfectly profitable business that is making Dell money. It would make no sense to privatize the company, in order to make changes to make the company more appealing to investors as a public company, in a way that really shrinks Dell's revenue base and makes them more dependent on a single market (services) and therefore more vulnerable to markets changing.

and in those few sentences, you summarized the entire problem with capitalism.

Consumer products are Dell's core business, this is just as stupid as when HP announced (and later recanted) that they would be focusing on business solutions. Dell has some very attractive products at the moment, if they could just make that final step and get their QC in gear and optimize internal processes they could be doing much better. The problem is not what they're selling, which is obvious based on the volumes that are selling, it's the way the company is managed.

Consumer is not as core to Dell as all PC sales are to HP. And all PC sales, not just Dell's are declining with consumers.

I think the PC profit margins are declining, but sales have gone up every year. The rate of growth is slowing.

Some suggested the moment netbooks were invented that no one would buy a PC again, and the same has been said for tablets. These other devices seem to supplement PCs, not completely replace them today. Perhaps in the future that will be the case, but right now PCs are still selling.

I think MS is trying to do away with the "PC" with it's Win 8 platform. By dumbing down the interface to a tablet, folks will be more inclined to move over to a tablet ... then buy a keyboard for it. Really, it's just a notebook computer sold as two separate parts.

MS is trying to move into the "appliance computer" market, eventually get to the point of having an x-box-like business console companies just hand their users. Set hardware platform, so it's easy to crank stuff out for. I think their move with Dell is about them getting one step closer to that goal.

Of course, this is a major assumption, but, that's really what most of us have now.

As for Dell, they failed b/c...

a) "innovation" and "cost cutting" to them meant "innovating" purchase agreements with cheaper, chinese parts companies and out-sourced tech support

b) they put crapware on their comps, and when you went to their sites to perform updates, they'd keep their crapware up-to-date, but you'd never find drivers or such. People don't give a shit about some companies all-in-one crapware diagnostic "tool" which is really just a slap-in-the face when it does shit like "oh, we see you're computer is slow...would you like to buy more RAM from us?"

c) their tech support sucked, for consumer and business. They cheaped out on parts, so comps broke down all the time, then their anemic tech support got slammed. Hanging up on customers or letting calls go unanswered time and time again is not how to handle "tech support".

d) they haven't changed their mentality ... they're still stuck in that 1980's MBA-ran, "we're trying to appease the shareholders, not the customers" mentality that got them in this mess in the first place.

Why all the hate on "dumbing down the interface"? I'm not saying I'm a fan of Metro, but the problem isn't that interfaces are being dumbed down, it's that they were so overly complicated, with replicated tech and buttons all over the place, now OS makers are starting to realize that they don't need to accommodate to everyone's different personal ways of doing thing, but to merely make it easy for the user to understand where the controls are, and they'll do the bending for you.

Right, so Dell wants to give the PC side of things the boot and any kind of deal with Microsoft won't get in the way of doing that... kind of like running away from home because you don't like taking out the trash only to find yourself eating out of a dumpster just to survive.

Just sell-off the PC side of things to Lenovo or Asus or someone else that actually wants to be in that market. The sad part is that Dell almost has it right with a lot of the systems they sell but don't know what non-business types really want.

I can see Dell wanting to go private. A see a lot of companies that went IPO now wishing they were private. Dealing with Wallstreet can be a pain. Case in point. Red Hat has shown 20-25% growth year after year since they went public. Yet they get poor ratings from Wallstreet because people don't understand their business model. Investors don't understand how you can make money even when you have to give away your product.

Most companies that partner with Microsoft lose. Thats just history. Microsoft tends to demolish even the friendlies it works with.

For those of you who have a low opinion of Linux, I think a lot of that is propaganda by Microsoft. A recent article came out talking about Microsoft's famous study on the Munich switch over to Linux. Microsoft touted it as a complete failure that cost more money than Microsoft cost. Years later it turns out that it was all lies. One thing is the study ignored the cost of Microsoft software, which is where all the money savings come in. They also lied about the percentage of machine still running Windows. Over 87% of the machines in Munich were successfully switched to Linux. Like it or not, Linux is the number one OS in the world. A large portion of that is Android. But there are a number of other free OS's coming out that all provide alternatives. Firefox OS, maemo or whatever it becomes, Chrome, Ubuntu. And for the most part they all use standards making them interchangeable. Microsoft's days of being able to lock in the world to their OS are numbered.

Most consumers don't need desktops, or the complexity that comes with it. Outside of development, graphic design, CAD, & movie/music editing, & high end gaming, consumer devices such as tablets & phones give them everything they want (internet browsing, email, simple games, music/movie player). Fixed platforms allow for fewer problems. Companies also like it because these can't easily be upgraded, and when they become full/slow/broken, consumers get to buy another one from them.

I fall into the category of needing a full desktop system, but even I haven't purchased one from a company that sells desktop systems (Dell, HP, etc.) in the last 10+ years. I'm picky, and like to buy each individual part and put it together myself.

I absolutely hate the idea of these locked down devices and app stores though.

We've seen where things are going. After Apple's coup in making a wildly successful business model from staunchly clinging to the closed system model for their entire existence, everyone wants to duplicate that. It's all about owning the whole stack, tightly controlling every single aspect, and squeezing consumers and developers alike by the balls for every shekel they can get. And consumers can't get enough.

The new frontier is the pay-to-play model, and as a developer, your costs increase with every new popular platform, because of the costs involved in hardware and tools, not to mention the shakedown of your profits.

Companies like Dell are doomed unless they become a part of someone else's machine, or somehow develop their own device du jour and get enough market share from it.

Honestly this is exactly my first thought on reading it. It screams out to me as a move by Microsoft to do two primary things: 1) eliminate the primary (and almost only) retailer of off-the-shelf computer pre-installed with Linux (in this case Ubuntu), and 2) acquire the hardware division it needs to move their lock-down plans forward.

Regarding point 2, they already started by locking down WindowsRT to force you to use their store, just like an iProduct forces you to use iTunes and the Apple App Store. Stage two that many of us have been pointing to as the logical (and horrifying) progression is to extend that control to the desktop (carefully, so as not to flirt with the AT&T-style breakup they were supposed to get before but bought their way out of), similarly to how Apple did with making Lion more iTunes-centric, with UEFI icing on the cake to lock down even other computers.

So yes, potentially two birds with one stone: kill off the only major retailer of consumer, off-the-shelf linux computers and set the stage for an Apple-like lockdown of the PC, complete with their hands on the hardware side (all it takes is saying "sorry, we're not licensing Windows to non-Dell computers any more" and businesses get to decide between migration costs to linux or using Dell exclusively, like you use Apple exclusively if you want a Mac).

Admittedly this is very much the worst-case extreme scenario, but given Microsoft's history and modus operandi you know it's occurred to them, and the thought alone is giving them hard-ons like a triple-dose of viagra.

What you don't seem to understand is that consumer's DON'T WANT LINUX. That's why Dell is the only company offering linux desktops, and I wonder what the ratio of windows vs linux boxes they sold, everything else being the same ofc.

I think you'll find it's you that don't understand; most consumers don't want anything but a computer that works for what they need it for, at a reasonable price. This is why people buy Macs (one reason anyway): they work, they're easy to use, and they do what they need (though I realize this doesn't cover the price point, it makes a very strong one for those other needs; other needs that met equally well by linux).

At the end of the day, for regular consumers looking for a personal-use desktop or laptop, the only ones that actively "want" windows are gamers (and many of them only because they don't want to deal with WINE).

At the end of the day, the problem retarding linux growth on the home computer is not that people don't want it, but that they either don't know it's there, that it's not available enough (few off-the-shelf offerings, and even fewer well-known ones even to those actively looking), and lingering misinformation that we've seen spread in this thread and every other on the topic.

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As to the person saying people are moving away from desktops/laptops, while true, it's not an ideal (or even viable) solution for all uses. Imagine trying to write a book, or a college paper. Imagine trying to do anything that requires true multitasking. There's not much solution to the multitasking issue, though you can solve the other inconveniences somewhat by using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse (this works on android; I don't know about iOS). This solution also defeats the primary advantages of a tablet: portability. If you're carrying around a keyboard and mouse, at that point you may as well keep a full-size laptop around.

I'm actually writing this on my tablet, touchtyping with the default android keyboard on the xoom. I use it a lot when i'm just out and about. But for actual, real work, be that my job, travel, or university work, i use a laptop. Why? Because it's far more powerful and much easier to get real work out of. The mobile space expands on the laptop space, but it will never (or at least for a very, very long time, and a few outright revolutions in input/output interfaces/devices) completely supplant it.

Your point about Dell and linux is ridiculous. The sales on those models are so low, Microsoft is not concerned about them. That point has not part in the discussion of Dell going private. If microsoft is so concerned about Linux why did they build linux support into Hyper-V?

It was exactly because Microsoft was worried about Linux that they put Linux support into Hyper-V. This was done in partnership with Red Hat to make sure that Linux VM's work on hyper-V and that Windows works on KVM. The gotcha was that Red Hat already had Windows supported on KVM. Enterprise was facing a choice, throw up KVM, which was free and supported many OS, or run hyper-V which only ran Windows well. Linux has been cannibalizing Windows share in the enterprise server room for several years, especially with KVM built into the kernel. Microsoft had to do something or its hypervisor was going to be left by the roadside.

What these Microsoft partners need is for Intel to deliver a price competitive, low power product. If Windows, their OEM partners, and x86 are going to live on in the consumer market, this must happen. Intel needs to realize it's margins are too high and that the Dells and HP's of this world are looking to greener pastures (Linux on ARM). While Win 8 needs a bit of polishing it is potentially the holy grail (business class Win32 and consumer class Metro in 1 package). Expensive Ultrabooks, Touch Ultrabooks, $1000 tablets and lack of x86 smartphones is the problem and it starts with Intel. I'd call out AMD too but they look to be focusing on ARM as well.

What you don't seem to understand is that consumer's DON'T WANT LINUX. That's why Dell is the only company offering linux desktops, and I wonder what the ratio of windows vs linux boxes they sold, everything else being the same ofc.

Consumers don't want Unix personal computers either if you ask them, except Apple sales are through the roof, and OS X is Unix.

Linux has never been marketed to consumers. Consumers don't know what it is, or that a choice even exists. Most consumers want the OS to be pre-installed on their hardware and to know what they're getting.

When friends and family ask me to fix the viruses/infections on their computers, I give them back a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine and ask them to try Linux out. They all seem to fall in love with it, never knowing beforehand that it was an option available to them.

I'm sorry that the two sentences in my original post turned this into a linux discussion (not that i'm unhappy to see so many that see and understand the reality of windows alternatives and their viability). It was a small part of my post because i don't think it's a primary motivator for MSFT in this case, but merely a secondary benefit they _really_ like. I would have hoped for more discussion on the more substantial portion of my original post, namely the potential for MSFT to use this to create even more lock-in and vertical integration, both of which are almost only ever Bad Things™ for consumers, competition, innovation and progress, and by extension the industry as a whole.

Sporkwitch, what people commonly lose sight of is that Microsoft is a software house first and foremost, and Office > Windows.

Owning its own operating systems is a good thing, but ultimately not key. Assuming that Valve gets its way and Steam enables Linux-as-a-desktop-OS-player, Microsoft will not hesitate to make a one-click Linux installer for Office 2016. Not to mention that Active Directory (and therefore business network services) isn't ultimately tied to Windows, it's a framework that could be moved to another server OS if needed.

Would these be radical changes? Certainly. But MS could make them. And might have to, depending on how things turn out.

What you don't seem to understand is that consumer's DON'T WANT LINUX. That's why Dell is the only company offering linux desktops, and I wonder what the ratio of windows vs linux boxes they sold, everything else being the same ofc.

Consumers don't want Unix personal computers either if you ask them, except Apple sales are through the roof, and OS X is Unix.

Linux has never been marketed to consumers. Consumers don't know what it is, or that a choice even exists. Most consumers want the OS to be pre-installed on their hardware and to know what they're getting.

When friends and family ask me to fix the viruses/infections on their computers, I give them back a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine and ask them to try Linux out. They all seem to fall in love with it, never knowing beforehand that it was an option available to them.

This is all very true. As Apple very clearly demonstrated with BSD Unix, the tragic thing for Linux boosters is that if "The Year Of Linux On the Desktop" ever arrived, it would only be possible if the general public had no idea they were buying Linux.

What's interesting is that today, for Linux to be truly dominant it would need to not be limited to the desktop because the desktop is becoming a niche. Mobile is the new mainstream, especially worldwide where at many income levels, acquisition and upkeep of a mobile computer is much easier than with a desktop. You'd need to be hoping for The Year Of Linux In Mobile. Which actually means, Linux boosters are getting what they want. This is The Year Of Linux...just not on the desktop. Android is based on Linux, and it's beginning to end up in everyone's pockets. If you wanted Linux to become a household item, you can start celebrating now.

It seems like consumer Windows PC's have been a low-margin commodity for years now, and Microsoft is trying to keep Dell's face in the mud. I think they'd be better off with a different investor who doesn't have such an agenda.

Please explain to us how MS is trying to 'keep Dell's face in the mud.' MS is not a direct competitor of Dell's in any way. The relationship between MS and Dell is a symbiotic one. MS can only benefit from helping Dell succeeding with what it plans on doing.

The article stated that Dell's intention is to get out of the home PC market, or at least diversify their home offerings, where they currently sell a lot of low-grade hardware for cheap prices. Shareholders are effectively forcing them to stay in the game, against Dell's wishes, and having Microsoft on the board will ensure that same pressure is still applied, if Dell is privatized. Microsoft still wants people at home using Windows PC's, and having a large US-based vendor supplying those at a low cost is absolutely in their best interest, even if Dell wants to focus elsewhere.

If Dell wants to further expand into tablets or smartphones, MS will push for WP8 or RT, or Win8, even if Android or some other derivative might have a better chance.

I see MS coming out better in every way as part of the deal, but I don't see it working well for Dell, as their autonomy is likely the only thing that will allow them to prosper. Being beholden to MS means that nothing changes.

Sporkwitch, what people commonly lose sight of is that Microsoft is a software house first and foremost, and Office > Windows.

Owning its own operating systems is a good thing, but ultimately not key. Assuming that Valve gets its way and Steam enables Linux-as-a-desktop-OS-player, Microsoft will not hesitate to make a one-click Linux installer for Office 2016. Not to mention that Active Directory (and therefore business network services) isn't ultimately tied to Windows, it's a framework that could be moved to another server OS if needed.

Would these be radical changes? Certainly. But MS could make them. And might have to, depending on how things turn out.

I'm US Military (Air Force specifically); I fully understand your point. It doesn't change the history, the potential of their ideal for control (whether through hardware or soft-, they don't care), and they will do anything they can to maintain it. If that means swallowing their pride and helping the linux kernel project to improve hyper-v, or porting office (sharepoint and active directory; their primary triumvirate of control in the enterprise), they'll do it.

I never said it was key. Nor did I say expanding vertically to hardware, like Apple has always been, is the only way. What I did say is that it is highly desirable to them, would help solidify their control, and make it even harder to break away.

I could expand more on the topic of document standards (odf is the ieee standard, by the way, though it's still a nightmare to get office to support it, even with an official plugin), but typing on a tablet is a pain in the ass, and makes properly sourcing even more of a pain (and given the direction of this discussion, including source is becoming more important.)

Short version, they only supported apple when they had to; first to establish market share, then they dropped support, and then supported it again as part of the antitrust action against them. They are more than happy to use that Office dependency (due to lock-in) to help force you into their OS, and by extension their hardware (if they expand vertically in that way), if they see it as viable and the alternatives not sufficiently threatening.

EDIT:I should point out that if your scenario plays out, Steam succeeds, and linux becomes the norm for desktops, then we've all won. If all we're tied to is office, the majority of the battle is won. Support for MSFT document standards is very good, if not perfect, in the FOSS world. If MSFT is forced into that corner, to make a native linux version of office, then we, including "linux for the desktop," have won. At that point, it's only a matter of time (and not much time at all, at that point) before MSFT is made entirely irrelevant, like vacuum tubes and punch-cards.

In 1997, at the height of his PC-fueled bravado, Dell CEO Michael Dell said publicly that Apple, then in decline, should be dissolved. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to shareholders." Now Apple sits near the pinnacle of the industry, and Dell is looking at giving his company's stockholders their money back—and taking the company private. And it looks like Microsoft is going to give him a hand with that.

So yes, potentially two birds with one stone: kill off the only major retailer of consumer, off-the-shelf linux computers and set the stage for an Apple-like lockdown of the PC, complete with their hands on the hardware side (all it takes is saying "sorry, we're not licensing Windows to non-Dell computers any more" and businesses get to decide between migration costs to linux or using Dell exclusively, like you use Apple exclusively if you want a Mac).

Admittedly this is very much the worst-case extreme scenario, but given Microsoft's history and modus operandi you know it's occurred to them, and the thought alone is giving them hard-ons like a triple-dose of viagra.

What history and modus operandi are you talking about? If I recall correctly, Microsoft was built on the premise of having one software run on everybody's (compatible) hardware. Providing software to any OEM that wanted it has been their M.O. during their whole existence. They have never restricted windows from any machine, not even Apple, you can purchase a Windows license and install it on your Mac and Microsoft will be more than happy to sell you one, and if you want Office with that, it'll be great. So, could you explain where exactly in their history has Microsoft shown any indication at all that they wanted to be exclusive on any given hardware?

Linux has never been marketed to consumers. Consumers don't know what it is, or that a choice even exists. Most consumers want the OS to be pre-installed on their hardware and to know what they're getting.

But consumers do often say, I want Microsoft Word or I want to write PowerPoints or I want Outlook. Everyone hates LibreOffice (sorry) and Thunderbird is fine for POP/IMAP, but it never works as well as true Microsoft Outlook when you are in an Microsoft Exchange environment. Also, games have for whatever reason settled as a Windows only software product.

If you took away Microsoft Office and games and .NET fanatics, no one would buy Windows. And honestly, if you just want a web browser, a Chromebook or an Android/iOS tablet is probably the best bet. Desktop Linux is much better if you want to do command line work (programming and IT work).

BTW, LaTeX is a thousand times better than Word or PowerPoint for any mildly technical user, but many companies and schools have built a critical mass around Microsoft and have a hostility towards any non-Microsoft competitors.

So yes, potentially two birds with one stone: kill off the only major retailer of consumer, off-the-shelf linux computers and set the stage for an Apple-like lockdown of the PC, complete with their hands on the hardware side (all it takes is saying "sorry, we're not licensing Windows to non-Dell computers any more" and businesses get to decide between migration costs to linux or using Dell exclusively, like you use Apple exclusively if you want a Mac).

Admittedly this is very much the worst-case extreme scenario, but given Microsoft's history and modus operandi you know it's occurred to them, and the thought alone is giving them hard-ons like a triple-dose of viagra.

What history and modus operandi are you talking about? If I recall correctly, Microsoft was built on the premise of having one software run on everybody's (compatible) hardware. Providing software to any OEM that wanted it has been their M.O. during their whole existence. They have never restricted windows from any machine, not even Apple, you can purchase a Windows license and install it on your Mac and Microsoft will be more than happy to sell you one, and if you want Office with that, it'll be great. So, could you explain where exactly in their history has Microsoft shown any indication at all that they wanted to be exclusive on any given hardware?

Actually they personally handed the PC market to Intel's x86 architecture by refusing to support other architectures; by default, x86 prospered while PowerPC and SPARC, etc. were relegated to purpose-built hardware and servers (and macs).

That said, MSFT's history and modus operandi has always been to make you use their products together, force you to go through them, and actively, deliberately make it more difficult and costly to break away from them. They have never been a PC hardware vendor before, and as such, what you see works out fine; if they expand into hardware, they would very much want to be the only ones you can work through.

Further, in the early days of the PC market the choice to stay vendor-agnostic in terms of who they would allow to use their OS was the right one, as it allowed them to increase marketshare rapidly, and it also helped significantly to commoditize computers in general. Today they already have the marketshare, they no longer need to spread quickly, but can afford to attempt a coup and become an Apple-like monolith. Will they? That's the question. If they try, can they do that without the DoJ breaking them up like they were going to back in the 90's? Probably not.

In the end, MSFT has always been about control, from restrictive licensing, intentionally breaking compatibility with competitors, illegally modifying ("accidentally implementing wrong") standards, covertly modifying content (IE's "view page source" used to replace unicode font designations with the MS-specific names, so if you C&P the source to use in your page you'd end up with an IE-only page), "Trusted Computing" (Paladium, etc.). The list goes on. The only constants with MSFT are that they value money, control, and monopoly. Have they learned to be more quiet and subtle about it since they bought their way out of that antitrust case (and Bill Gates suffered a psychotic break)? Absolutely, but just because they're more careful doesn't mean the goals changed.

Linux has never been marketed to consumers. Consumers don't know what it is, or that a choice even exists. Most consumers want the OS to be pre-installed on their hardware and to know what they're getting.

But consumers do often say, I want Microsoft Word or I want to write PowerPoints or I want Outlook. Everyone hates LibreOffice (sorry) and Thunderbird is fine for POP/IMAP, but it never works as well as true Microsoft Outlook when you are in an Microsoft Exchange environment. Also, games have for whatever reason settled as a Windows only software product.

If you took away Microsoft Office and games and .NET fanatics, no one would buy Windows. And honestly, if you just want a web browser, a Chromebook or an Android/iOS tablet is probably the best bet. Desktop Linux is much better if you want to do command line work (programming and IT work).

BTW, LaTeX is a thousand times better than Word or PowerPoint for any mildly technical user, but many companies and schools have built a critical mass around Microsoft and have a hostility towards any non-Microsoft competitors.

Do they want Word, or is Word synonymous with word processor? Do they want PowerPoint or is PowerPoint synonymous with slide/presentation tools? Outlook or just a POP3/IMAP client?

You're attributing far too much credit to the AVERAGE consumer, who has no clue what any of these things are. The average consumer is just like our parents for whom all game consoles were Nintendos (then Playstations, now X-Boxes) regardless of what they really were, or how all MP3 players became iPods. Do you want a tissue or a Kleenex, a q-tip or cotton swab? In America, at least, they're interchangeable.

There's no need to take away office; LibreOffice handles 100% of what the average user needs and 99% of what the majority of advanced users do. This will also make you standards-compliant, since theirs are the IEEE document format standards. Even if you need to work with someone that doesn't support them, you can export to PDF. All free, with minimal learning curve (hell, less learning curve than that horrific ribbon in the new versions of Office >_<). You say everyone hates it, but you cite no source on that. It's a pretty bold claim, since many of us like it far more than Office, especially the recent versions of Office. As to working in an Exchange environment, the real question is why the fuck are you doing that? The worst server OS combined with the worst and least-scalable mail server? That said, you're right, MSFT's products work best with MSFT's products, because they only want you using theirs and no one else's; this is hardly surprising, given that many of the legal actions against them are for intentionally breaking compatibility and preventing others' products from properly integrating with their products and Windows.

Games are already hitting Linux in greater numbers (and it's the single most-requested thing in Kickstarter games projects, and many generally agree to provide a native Linux version, if they didn't start the campaign with one planned), and Steam will only help this accelerate. Even then, the vast majority of games will run in WINE today with little or no trouble at all, and minimal effort (also improving constantly since a new team took over the WINE project a couple years back); at any given time I only have one or two games that either won't work or won't work without a lot of headache to make them, and even then it usually turns out to be DRM issues, not the game itself.

And unsurprisingly you're still spouting off the (debunked over a decade ago) myth that Linux is only better (or good at all) for command-line work. While this is true, it's infinitely superior to Windows (and even MacOSX; they say it's POSIX-compliant, but I've run into some missing commands and improper syntax on 10.6) for command-line work, it is absolutely not inferior for anything else. Linux does everything the average user needs a computer to do just as well as Windows does, and usually better, more securely, and more stable (also for free).____________

As I reread your post I see more and more that you don't actually know the history on why any of this is the way it is. Do you know why schools have a critical mass around MSFT products and don't use competing products on those Windows machines? Part of the actively-helpful-to-MSFT settlement of the anti-trust action was massively-reduced licensing fees for educational institutions. MSFT took advantage of this to say that if you took that license, instead of the normal full-price retail license, you could not use competing software (e.g. LibreOffice, or at the time StarOffice/OpenOffice), but must instead use MSFT products for any task for which one exists. MSFT also likes helping out schools because if you teach them to use their tools and make sure they're only good for making software for Windows they'll be more likely to continue doing so later, helping perpetuate their monopoly by simply reducing the number of people that know HOW to create for or use something else. Though anecdotal, slightly before I attended Holyoke Community College about a deacde ago, MSFT had made some substantial "donations" to the school; suddenly the advisory board is saying no one uses C anymore and drops it. They now teach Java and VB.net exclusively, and they made that switch during the height of the PS2 and X-Box; two consoles for which nearly every piece of software was written in C.

As to gaming becoming Windows-only, that goes back to DirectX. It's a very developer-friendly API, and like most of MSFT's tools, it does a lot of the work for you and doesn't require you to know it very well to get something out of it. As such, it quickly became popular. Being owned by MSFT, this automatically meant that if your program required DirectX it was a Windows program. OpenGL is actually more powerful and more efficient (in terms of performance/resource-usage relationships), but it requires more knowledge of its workings to take advantage of it. If a game supports OpenGL, it's generally trivial to build a Linux-native version of it, and even without that, it's generally very easy to get it working in WINE (since most of the trouble is usually .net and DirectX).

That brings us to .net. Another tool designed primarily to do the developer's work for them, lots of drag-and-drop blocks of code that you don't even need to fully understand, just plug in with a couple variables. It also locks you into MSFT. Most of what it does is already handled by other libraries you could invoke (proper shared code and dependency resolution FTW; DLLs need to die), but it's simply easier to use MSFT's tools. And that's their goal: make it easy to use, let the rapid improvement in hardware make up for inefficient code, and lock people into a MSFT world.

The growth of console gaming scared them greatly; most of their hold on a monopoly was the PC gaming market thanks to DirectX (and to a lesser extent, .net). Enter the WindowsCE and the Dreamcast... which flopped. Back to the drawing board, and we get the DirectX-Box project. And you see where we are with that now: heavily (and unsustainably) subsidizing a known-bad design with a ~60% failure rate solely to help gain marketshare early on, and they'll keep doing it if they need to (especially with how many idiots are stupid enough to pay rent on their NIC and free services, in the name of "X-Box Live"; pure profit rolling in there, so maybe replacing half the consoles for the first few years was sustainable, when you consider the 99.9999% profit margin on XBL subscriptions).

Why all the hate on "dumbing down the interface"? I'm not saying I'm a fan of Metro, but the problem isn't that interfaces are being dumbed down, it's that they were so overly complicated, with replicated tech and buttons all over the place, now OS makers are starting to realize that they don't need to accommodate to everyone's different personal ways of doing thing, but to merely make it easy for the user to understand where the controls are, and they'll do the bending for you.

The problem is only partly that the basic interface is "dumb-ed down". All too often, what this means in practice, is that the interface makes more sophisticated usage difficult, actively "gets in the way" (imposing extra steps and work-arounds) -- and even makes it difficult or impossible to modify that work environment so that it's reasonably convenient and more usable, for doing the real work at hand.

For those of you who have a low opinion of Linux, I think a lot of that is propaganda by Microsoft. A recent article came out talking about Microsoft's famous study on the Munich switch over to Linux. Microsoft touted it as a complete failure that cost more money than Microsoft cost. Years later it turns out that it was all lies. One thing is the study ignored the cost of Microsoft software, which is where all the money savings come in. They also lied about the percentage of machine still running Windows. Over 87% of the machines in Munich were successfully switched to Linux. Like it or not, Linux is the number one OS in the world. A large portion of that is Android. But there are a number of other free OS's coming out that all provide alternatives. Firefox OS, maemo or whatever it becomes, Chrome, Ubuntu. And for the most part they all use standards making them interchangeable. Microsoft's days of being able to lock in the world to their OS are numbered.

(For years, a substantial portion of many Linux-oriented websites revenue was the barrage of advertisements from Microsoft's notorious "Get The Facts" campaign against Linux -- not a one of their "white papers" or "case studies" stood up to any real scrutiny (and some collapsed if one merely read past the title). This latest shot appears to have been inspired by a recent German advisory committee's public, official recommendation that the German government should adopt as official policy to make its own software available as open source. But not even MS dares expose the supposed "research" behind MS's criticism to public view.)

Actually they personally handed the PC market to Intel's x86 architecture by refusing to support other architectures; by default, x86 prospered while PowerPC and SPARC, etc. were relegated to purpose-built hardware and servers

I assume next time I need some proof for Linux fanatics (I'm choosing those words quite carefully-99% off all Linux users are perfectly fine people there's just this really vocal minority that ruins it for all of us) spread FUD just as much as ms fans I'll show your post.

Be so free and check on which architectures nt runs - that may be slightly disappointing though (did you know that ms stopped supporting itanium only after redhat? So clearly redhat is the real problem here! )

Actually they personally handed the PC market to Intel's x86 architecture by refusing to support other architectures; by default, x86 prospered while PowerPC and SPARC, etc. were relegated to purpose-built hardware and servers

I assume next time I need some proof for Linux fanatics (I'm choosing those words quite carefully-99% off all Linux users are perfectly fine people there's just this really vocal minority that ruins it for all of us) spread FUD just as much as ms fans I'll show your post.

Be so free and check on which architectures nt runs - that may be slightly disappointing though (did you know that ms stopped supporting itanium only after redhat? So clearly redhat is the real problem here! )

Actually they personally handed the PC market to Intel's x86 architecture by refusing to support other architectures; by default, x86 prospered while PowerPC and SPARC, etc. were relegated to purpose-built hardware and servers

I assume next time I need some proof for Linux fanatics (I'm choosing those words quite carefully-99% off all Linux users are perfectly fine people there's just this really vocal minority that ruins it for all of us) spread FUD just as much as ms fans I'll show your post.

Be so free and check on which architectures nt runs - that may be slightly disappointing though (did you know that ms stopped supporting itanium only after redhat? So clearly redhat is the real problem here! )

Which came out long after x86 was already the dominant desktop architecture. I would hardly call servers running Itaniums "personal computers" (nor would most reasonable people.) While not entirely responsible for it, MSFT focusing exclusively on x86 from the very beginning, and not expanding until well after it became the standard for (any that weren't Macs) personal computers (PCs), is largely responsible for other architectures dying off in the PC world. It's also very unlikely that even PowerPC would have lasted so long were it not for Apple sticking with them for as long as they did; without Apple, MSFT and x86 would have been the only game in town as early as the 80's and would have continued to be so.

By no means am I a fanatic, nor am I spreading FUD here. This is the simple history of the industry and the companies in question. Arguably MSFT's helping hand the market to x86 is actually a very good thing, as it further sped up commoditization of computer hardware (which is a Good Thing™ for consumers), and by having a single standard be so widespread it makes development for that easier. This is one of those rare instances where MSFT has been extremely good for the industry as a whole (as opposed to usual where they hold it back, or attempt to). I raised this historical fact in support of my point that MSFT has always been about control; which is nothing new for them. You'd do well to read some of the histories on MSFT, what they did, how they did it, and what there goals were at the time; you'll find it quite enlightening.

Also worth a read would be the infamous "Halloween Documents," some of which cover very recent events and the exact points I already raised.

EDIT:More regarding the Itanium (I honestly didn't know much about it other than it being a server processor, not a PC one), it apparently didn't support 32-bit software written for x86 processors, and that in itself would have made it very difficult to succeed. Combine it with AMD's x86-64 and it was a no-brainer who'd win, and for the same reasons that MSFT was so largely responsible in making Intel's x86 the standard before it: all the software ran on it.

It seems like consumer Windows PC's have been a low-margin commodity for years now, and Microsoft is trying to keep Dell's face in the mud. I think they'd be better off with a different investor who doesn't have such an agenda.

not sure if you're being serious. Dell is primarily a consumer company that, while facing heat now, makes most of its revenue from consumers (60%). that means windows.

ms helping take dell private is so they can get a direct revenue stream from dell's new pursuit in the business world. you seem to imply that dell would move into the business domain and, what, use apple? they will most likely still use windows. ms just wants a direct feed.

ultimately, whether ms helps them transition or not, dell would likely still use windows so i'm not sure where you get the idea that the problem is with Windows. the bigger problem with trying to work the business environment is if you DON'T use windows. or you know, making business software services that don't run on windows client. what, is dell going to target the linux environment? you think that's going to get them anywhere?

It seems like consumer Windows PC's have been a low-margin commodity for years now, and Microsoft is trying to keep Dell's face in the mud. I think they'd be better off with a different investor who doesn't have such an agenda.

not sure if you're being serious. Dell is primarily a consumer company that, while facing heat now, makes most of its revenue from consumers (60%). that means windows.

ms helping take dell private is so they can get a direct revenue stream from dell's new pursuit in the business world. you seem to imply that dell would move into the business domain and, what, use apple? they will most likely still use windows. ms just wants a direct feed.

ultimately, whether ms helps them transition or not, dell would likely still use windows so i'm not sure where you get the idea that the problem is with Windows. the bigger problem with trying to work the business environment is if you DON'T use windows. or you know, making business software services that don't run on windows client. what, is dell going to target the linux environment? you think that's going to get them anywhere?

Considering their server market, the fact that many companies and government agencies already use linux, and that they already have lines of computers pre-installed with Linux, why not? Would they stop selling Windows machines? Of course not, but they ALREADY target Linux users, a marketshare that has only ever been increasing, both at home and in business (and it's already king on servers.)

What you don't seem to understand is that consumer's DON'T WANT LINUX. That's why Dell is the only company offering linux desktops, and I wonder what the ratio of windows vs linux boxes they sold, everything else being the same ofc.

Which is why Linux (Android) "only" owns more than half the smartphone marketshare. Nobody wants it.